[3830] ARRL 10 W0AIH(NE9U) SO Mixed HP

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                    ARRL 10-Meter Contest

Call: W0AIH
Operator(s): NE9U
Station: W0AIH

Class: SO Mixed HP
QTH: WI
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   CW:  661    62
  SSB:  484    47
-------------------
Total: 1145   109  Total Score = 384,770

Club: Minnesota Wireless Association

Comments:

Thanks to everyone for another fun 10 meter contest!  As everyone has said,
conditions werent the best....I beat my brains in for 34 hours with all of
Pauls hardware for 387K points.  In 2002 from my home qth and a little A4
tribander and low power, I had 1.1M points.  hi  Lets hope for some sunspots!

I took the afternoon off from work, went for a 5 mile run in the cold, and then
drove the 100 miles from Stevens Point to Eau Claire.  When I arrived at 2200Z I
found Paul laying on the floor underneath the 10 meter position pulling on
wires. Oh Oh!  Apparently when he fired up the power in "The Chalet", all the
computers came on except the 10 meter computer.  After we fiddle with it for 15
minutes, we decided to just replace it with one of Pauls spares.  Paul ran down
to his house to get one and I unhooked all the com ports, dvp cables, etc from
the computer.  Before Paul got back I put the computer on the work bench and
gave it one more try.  And of course it worked.  So since all my TR files were
on this machine, we hooked everything back up and used it.

The only other hardware excitement came 1/2 hour into the contest when none of
the rotors worked!  I fiddled with them while working stations for the next
half hour and then it dawned on me....I had plugged a 1500 watt space heater
(for my feet...it gets chilly in "The chalet" in the winter!)into the power
strip most of the rotors were on and blew a circuit breaker.

Paul has a wide variety of 10 meter antennas to choose
from:(http://www.qth.com/w0aih/10m.htm

Last year I used the 4X5 stack almost exclusively.  Paul got a couple more in
line that were out of commission last year (The 5L at 200 and the 4X3 stack). 
The 5L at 200 worked great and thats the antenna i kept pointed SW most of the
time.  The 4X5 again was the best and kept it  pointed SE most of the time. 
The 4X3 didnt perform very well and we think it has some coax or connector
problems.  When working, it should be a very good scatter antenna.

The contest started our fairly good with 253 qso's in the log by 0600 when i
pulled the switch.  Saturdasy morning started out good with 3 hours and 150
qso's in the log before the band decided to die.  The next 8 hours netted 75
qso's.  Luckily Saturday evening got better and I went to bed with 600 qsos in
the log.  Sunday was pretty good all day long with rates of 40-60.  Hour 1500Z
peaked at 92 and 2100z was the low point at 9.  The last 2 hours were a nice
opening to Oklahoma, New Mexico and West Texas.

Again, thanks to everyone for the qso's and thanks to Paul for letting me use
his fine station. Its always a fun time and Paul and Mary are great hosts!

73

Scott  NE9U


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